I knew of Joe Bonamassa as this asskicking chop-and-taste-heavy mainly-Brit style American heavy blues rocker. My review of his 2004 album Had to Cry Today closed with something like, "I hope this guy doesn't die soon because a) we've heard so little of him and more importantly b) the world will give him the same blown up status that it last gave SRV".

Joe has a great voice along with a tasteful selection of songs to cover, to go well with his top-notch writing style on any particular album. His chops, influenced mainly by the likes of Jeff Beck, Peter Green and Cream-era Clapton, are probably the most superior among the players in this genre. His album sleeves list a major array of guitars he plays, but no matter what he plays and plays through, he gets his tones. A sure sign of a great player.

Back to the first line, I knew of him as a heavy blues rocker. But on 2007's Sloe Gin, as seen on the cover below, Joe's theme is acoustic based blues songs. He's done that on a song or two on his albums prior to this but not to this extent and not this coherently. Surely, bang in the middle of the album there's a boogie rocker in Another Kind of Love and a couple of other heavy moments but most of this album revolves around moody and soulful acoustic based songs with hard rocking distorted rhythm guitars used during choruses and such.

Chris Whitley's Ball Peen Hammer, Ten Years After's classic blues rocker One of these Days, Bad Company's Seagull, Tim Curry's Sloe Gin, the track the album is named after,  the aforementioned John Mayall's Another Kind of Love, Charles Brown's Black Night and John Martyn's Jelly Roll are all different flavours of blues/blues-rock classics that Joe covers on this album, though making them into his own and fitting them brilliantly into the theme of this album. He also re-works the excellent Around the Bend which was on Had to Cry Today and makes it sound stunningly better on this album. With all the covers and re-workings I almost forgot to mention original tunes like Dirt in My Pocket which is actually my pick of the album, especially the bit when the heavy guitars come crashing in with the divine acoustic arpeggiated chords as the backdrop and to top it all he plays some righteous slide guitars through this. Also cool is the album closer called India, which, like the name suggests, does sound Indian Classical influenced. Sounds something right out of the Ry Cooder - Vishwa Mohan Bhatt venture.

Joe's playing isn't always as blazing as on say, Had to Cry Today, but this isn't the place you want to be looking at for those, considering the premise of this album. His solos here are epic, ballsy and soulful with note selection, phrasing, intonation, vibrato and the tones to die for. He especially fully explores his slide playing that'll make Duane proud. There's a lot of keyboards and synths used to fill up spaces and to add flavour to this power trio and this has been extremely well produced by none other than Kevin Shirley (Led Zep, Iron Maiden, Aerosmith, Rush etc). 

Year of Release: 2007

Label: Premier Artists Records (US)/ Provogue Records (Europe)